Jesse Ball - The Curfew

— Died in the night, two weeks ago.

— Two weeks, three days, said the girl.

— There is no body. The body was taken. He has been …

— Accused, said the girl. It is unlikely that we will bury him. Nonetheless, we would like a stone.

— For her to visit, said the father.

— We will go with her, of course, said the mother.

William took out his notebook. He took out a pencil and his knife. He sharpened the pencil.

At the top of the page he wrote:

?

He looked up.

— The name?

— Jacob Lansher.

— Have you considered what you would like the stone to say?

Meanwhile, he wrote on the page:

Jacob Lansher.

The state of the room really was remarkable. It was full of contraband things. It was, in short, the house of a government minister, or seemed so. And yet, the disappearance of the husband.

— He was a writer, said the girl.

— Not exactly, said her father.

— He was.

— Dora, said her mother sharply. You agreed.

Dora looked away.

The mother handed William a piece of paper. It said:

Jacob Lansher

Dutiful Husband, Devoted Son.

— We’ve agreed upon this.

— I refuse, said Dora. He would have hated that.

— He made his decision, said the father.

Dora was on her feet.

— You know more than you’ll say.

— If I do, said her father, then you’re lucky.

The girl stormed out of the room. William was left staring at the parents.

— We make no apologies for her, said the mother. She is a grown woman.

— He was a dissenter, said the father. He couldn’t change. He was always thinking of how things were. It was the end of him.

William wrote on the page:

Jacob Lansher

Dutiful Husband, Devoted Son.

He closed the notebook. He set the pencil carefully in his pocket.

— It will be as you say.

— Thank you. Have them send the bill around.

He stood up, nodded to them, and went back along the hallway to the door. He opened it and closed it behind him. He proceeded to the staircase

and stood

for one

minute,

then

another.

The door to the apartment opened. The girl came out. She joined him by the staircase.

William took the pencil from his pocket and opened the notebook.

— There will be two stones, he said. The first will be as they say. You determine the second. You cannot go to it, unless you are sure you are not followed. Do you understand?

Dora murmured yes.

William wrote on a new page:

Jacob Lansher

then beneath it

John ACBLASER

then

John Cable Ras

John Carables

John Sarcable

— Sarcable, he said.

— That’s good.

William leaned against the rail and squinted his eyes. He wrote on the page.

— That’s good, said the girl again. John Sarcable. Elsewhere and beloved.

She smiled.

— One thing, and thank you. White marble, and leave room for his wife, when she dies.

He broke the pencil in half and put the pieces in his pocket.

— Goodbye.

William stopped on the final step, and thought for a moment of the stairs he had been thrown down as a child. It was an accident. A woman thought that he was her son in the darkness of the building and, in great anger, had hurled him headlong. The actual boy was there too, but did not get thrown.

William had broken both his hands, and they had healed in a rather odd way. It was later thought by aficionados that this breaking of his hands was an advantage in his violin playing, and there was an ill-advised spate of hand breaking that went on until it was seen the accident could not be successfully replicated.

The woman was imprisoned and drowned herself in a washbasin. William never heard what happened to the son, but he often felt that if his life were a book, the boy would intercede at some point to take some terrible blow meant for William.

On then to his final appointment. For this he went out of the city gates and a little ways down to a waterfront and harbor that stretched there. He passed a woman who was putting up posters that read, MY HUSBAND HAS DISAPPEARED AND I MUST FIND HIM, with a photograph of a middle-aged man standing in a doorway wearing a prerevolutionary suit. William did not meet her eyes as he passed.

By the last pier, there was a shack with a sign that read:

FISH if you WANT THEM.

He knocked on the door of the shack, which made an awful racket.

— Coming!

A young man came to the door.

— Yes?

— I’m from the mason.

— The mason?

— Yes, about the gravestone.

— Ah, the mason … yes, well. I would ask you to come in, but I imagine you wouldn’t like it at all in here. I mean, I live here and I don’t like it at all. We’d be better to just sit over there on that bench.

He pointed to a bench on a hill overlooking the harbor.

— Sure enough.

The young man shook his hand.

— So, you might think this a bit strange, but the tombstone I want is actually for myself.

William nodded.

— Won’t be a problem. Are you intending to … fill it soon?

— Fill it?

The young man blushed.

— Of course not! I just, well, I will explain it.

They walked up the hill to the bench and sat down. The young man was wearing fisherman’s waxed clothing that was quite dirty. He himself had the sheen of good health and a thin but shining face. He seemed a very happy fellow indeed.